Mark Lawson: Scientists are trying to engage with believers but it won’t resolve the big questions

Religious believers, when mentioning heaven, have traditionally cast their eyes skywards, but the possibility of an afterlife may now be proved by looking down towards the ground. Doctors at Southampton University are placing pictures in resuscitation areas that can only be seen from the ceiling. These will test the stories of defibrillated patients, who claim they have looked down on the crash teams attending to their lifeless bodies. The theory is that any of the chest-thumped who successfully play this posthumous game of Where’s Wally? must have had an out-of-body experience, rather than the final flashing fantasy of a dying brain.